Research: 2012 Healthcare CIO 25

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee05/01/12

2012 Healthcare CIO 25

What makes a health IT executive stand out? Even a quick scan of the CIOs and CMIOs profiled in our second annual CIO 25 honor roll will make the distinction clear. The common thread is their passion and dedication to improving patient care. Take Drexel DeFord, senior VP and CIO of Seattle Children's Hospital and chair of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives. One driving force behind his work was the death of a patient as a result of medical errors. The subsequent investigation revealed clinicians' pervasive frustration with slow computer login times and eventually led to profound changes in Seattle Children's IT infrastructure.

Mike LeRoy, CIO at Detroit Medical Center, also has his sights set on saving lives. Last year, the medical center opened a smart unit, a 30-bed acute care telemetry unit that links medical devices with clinical and workflow software to improve the safety, quality and efficiency of patient care. Clinicians get vital signs and other patient data from bedside devices in real time, and information flows right to the patient's EHR.

George Brenckle, senior VP and CIO at UMass Memorial Health Care, is making his contribution to better patient care by harnessing the power of big data. With the help of Informatica, a data integration vendor, UMass has aggregated and cleaned up the healthcare system's enterprise master patient index, giving users easy access to the data contained in more than 5 million patient records. That sets the stage for the kind of data analytics that can improve clinical outcomes and lower costs.

UMass has also built an 'ICU bunker' a central command center that's patched into the 10 intensive care units in the hospital system. Specialists in the bunker have video and audio access to the ICUs, and they get real-time data on patients. The command center has been responsible for a 20% drop in mortality at UMass's ICUs since it was put in place, explains Brenckle.

The list of passionate health IT leaders who are committed to better patient care goes on and on, which is why we hope you'll take a closer look at the exceptional doers and thinkers profiled here. (R5040512)